What better place to begin with this week's sackful of singles than with, supposedly, the end.
"Rock! Is deader than dead!" taunts junior misfit turned robobabe alterna-idol Brian, in a kind of grossly expanded glam schoolyard chant: "La la la la la la!" Hey ho, if it's summertime, it must be one of Manson's attempts to discombobulate Middle America. Not, this time, with Third Reich stage props or snouts made from dead folk, but with the information that rock - that most Yankee of pastimes; that national institution on a pegging with baseball, hot dogs and serial murder - is a bit saggy round the joins. It being 43 and all.
"But wait," you cry. "Surely the very success of Manson and his ilk proves that rock is not expired, deceased, kaput, etc, per se, but that it has taken on a new, vigorous and electronically-enhanced form?" Aha. You see how he toys with us,
the
wily serpent? In a way though, Brian's right: rock has moved on. Where before, rock stars reliably self-destructed, now, they just self-deconstruct. Boom, and indeed, ka-pow.
JAMES OLDHAM
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